Schrodinger's Cat, a Doorbell & an Old-Lady Turkey
Wednesday, 24 July 2024, 18:48
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Emma Langford, Wednesday, 24 July 2024, 18:53
I have a friend whose home is surrounded by wildflowers. She raises chickens and ducks. Her garden is planted with beans and squash and tomatoes and herbs. Each morning she watches the sun rise over a mountain range that can only be described as majestic. Her kids wear daisies in their hair and have their own little strawberry patch. Neighbors can swing by and pick up a box of eggs - each one comes with a pretty personalized stamp.
(Now, if she were painting this picture she would tell you about the mud that gets dragged into her home by her dogs and kids. She would tell you about the deer that come and eat everything as it sprouts. She would tell you about the frost that destroys her first plantings meaning that she has to start over from scratch again and again. She would tell you that despite having an abundance of home-grown home-raised produce one of her kids would still rather eat just frozen processed chicken nuggets for every single meal, and that despite seeming to live in an idyllic rural haze, actually her kids do still occasionally draw on the walls with marker pens. She would tell you how hard it is to keep things alive in the high altitude dry summers and how hard it is to have to shovel snow day after day through the long winters just to get from her front door to her car.)
Depending on which version you read her life is either perfect or not perfect, and since both accounts above are real, we could conclude that perfect and not perfect are simultaneously true. It’s all very ‘Schrodinger’s Cat.’
“But, ah-ha,” she would say, “even in the ‘perfect’ version I have found something that is missing from my life.”
“How could this be?” We might reply. “You have flowers and sunrises and you are connected to the earth - surely you have everything you could ever want or need.”
“In my whole adult life,” she says, “I have never had a doorbell.”
And so a doorbell has been ordered. It is arriving tomorrow.
We all know how a doorbell works. Someone (maybe a friend, maybe someone making a delivery, maybe someone who wants to buy a box of eggs) presses the button, there is a ring inside the house, and if the homeowner is home they open the door (or maybe they take a sneaky look through a window to see who it is and then decide whether to go ahead and open the door, or whether to crouch down and hide, pretending they are not home, because they really don’t want to deal with whoever is on the other side of the door at that moment - some people might do this, I’m not say I ever have, I’m just acknowledging that it is a possible scenario, maybe, for other people, or something…). A doorbell in itself is a simple, familiar thing. It won’t end up transforming my friend’s life - having someone knock on the door ends up achieving the same result (and in her case, her dogs, chickens, ducks and an old-lady turkey all raise the alarm with much excitement whenever a car pulls into the driveway, so the doorbell is actually going to be drowned out by the canine-poultry chorus that announces any new arrival anyway). The real excitement lies in the waiting. In wondering what having a doorbell is going to be like. Expectation.
This morning I used a hair mask. It cost $3 from the grocery store. It is not fancy. I have used it before. I know how it works (or doesn’t). The results are typically minimal. I used it anyway. And as I sat with my hair covered in what is basically just a conditioner in a sachet for 2 hours I wondered if this might be the day that my hair ended up being softer and shinier than ever before, the sort of hair that turns heads. As expected, now that it is rinsed off and my hair is blow-dried, it is just as it always is. No better. No worse.
Also this morning I baked homemade bread. I added yeast to warm water and watched it bubble up. I added flour, salt, oil etc and mixed it just like I have mixed bread before, and although I knew how it would (probably - I never really know with bread - I tend to oscillate between it being ok and it being bad) turn out I wondered if it might just be the most spectacular bread anyone had ever made. After 2 hours (same amount of time as the hair goo - honestly a coincidence - there was no intention in that) the bread was ready and we ate it, and as expected it was completely fine, but no-one’s life was changed.
But still, I’d had hours of anticipation, and actually sometimes that is the real treat - the wondering. And so I hope my friend feels all the doorbell anticipation feels. In fact, I almost hope the delivery gets delayed a day, just so she can extend the happiness of looking forward to it, of wondering what life might be like post-doorbell. It will probably be the same as life post-hair mask, and post-bread. No better. No worse. Not perfect, but not not-perfect either.
But in all of this, one thing emerges as being actually perfect. Perfect anticipation, perfect execution, perfect reward of satisfaction when the job is done. As I'm writing this my oldest child is picking up a new batch of eggs. They will taste delicious. But an equal joy (ok, a greater joy) will come from the moment when he brings them home. He will put them on the countertop and say "Mum, the eggs are here." And I will open the boxes (I buy 3 dozen at a time - these boy children will not stop eating) and I will take a few minutes just to stand and look and admire.
Schrodinger's Cat, a Doorbell & an Old-Lady Turkey
I have a friend whose home is surrounded by wildflowers. She raises chickens and ducks. Her garden is planted with beans and squash and tomatoes and herbs. Each morning she watches the sun rise over a mountain range that can only be described as majestic. Her kids wear daisies in their hair and have their own little strawberry patch. Neighbors can swing by and pick up a box of eggs - each one comes with a pretty personalized stamp.
(Now, if she were painting this picture she would tell you about the mud that gets dragged into her home by her dogs and kids. She would tell you about the deer that come and eat everything as it sprouts. She would tell you about the frost that destroys her first plantings meaning that she has to start over from scratch again and again. She would tell you that despite having an abundance of home-grown home-raised produce one of her kids would still rather eat just frozen processed chicken nuggets for every single meal, and that despite seeming to live in an idyllic rural haze, actually her kids do still occasionally draw on the walls with marker pens. She would tell you how hard it is to keep things alive in the high altitude dry summers and how hard it is to have to shovel snow day after day through the long winters just to get from her front door to her car.)
Depending on which version you read her life is either perfect or not perfect, and since both accounts above are real, we could conclude that perfect and not perfect are simultaneously true. It’s all very ‘Schrodinger’s Cat.’
“But, ah-ha,” she would say, “even in the ‘perfect’ version I have found something that is missing from my life.”
“How could this be?” We might reply. “You have flowers and sunrises and you are connected to the earth - surely you have everything you could ever want or need.”
“In my whole adult life,” she says, “I have never had a doorbell.”
And so a doorbell has been ordered. It is arriving tomorrow.
We all know how a doorbell works. Someone (maybe a friend, maybe someone making a delivery, maybe someone who wants to buy a box of eggs) presses the button, there is a ring inside the house, and if the homeowner is home they open the door (or maybe they take a sneaky look through a window to see who it is and then decide whether to go ahead and open the door, or whether to crouch down and hide, pretending they are not home, because they really don’t want to deal with whoever is on the other side of the door at that moment - some people might do this, I’m not say I ever have, I’m just acknowledging that it is a possible scenario, maybe, for other people, or something…). A doorbell in itself is a simple, familiar thing. It won’t end up transforming my friend’s life - having someone knock on the door ends up achieving the same result (and in her case, her dogs, chickens, ducks and an old-lady turkey all raise the alarm with much excitement whenever a car pulls into the driveway, so the doorbell is actually going to be drowned out by the canine-poultry chorus that announces any new arrival anyway). The real excitement lies in the waiting. In wondering what having a doorbell is going to be like. Expectation.
This morning I used a hair mask. It cost $3 from the grocery store. It is not fancy. I have used it before. I know how it works (or doesn’t). The results are typically minimal. I used it anyway. And as I sat with my hair covered in what is basically just a conditioner in a sachet for 2 hours I wondered if this might be the day that my hair ended up being softer and shinier than ever before, the sort of hair that turns heads. As expected, now that it is rinsed off and my hair is blow-dried, it is just as it always is. No better. No worse.
Also this morning I baked homemade bread. I added yeast to warm water and watched it bubble up. I added flour, salt, oil etc and mixed it just like I have mixed bread before, and although I knew how it would (probably - I never really know with bread - I tend to oscillate between it being ok and it being bad) turn out I wondered if it might just be the most spectacular bread anyone had ever made. After 2 hours (same amount of time as the hair goo - honestly a coincidence - there was no intention in that) the bread was ready and we ate it, and as expected it was completely fine, but no-one’s life was changed.
But still, I’d had hours of anticipation, and actually sometimes that is the real treat - the wondering. And so I hope my friend feels all the doorbell anticipation feels. In fact, I almost hope the delivery gets delayed a day, just so she can extend the happiness of looking forward to it, of wondering what life might be like post-doorbell. It will probably be the same as life post-hair mask, and post-bread. No better. No worse. Not perfect, but not not-perfect either.
But in all of this, one thing emerges as being actually perfect. Perfect anticipation, perfect execution, perfect reward of satisfaction when the job is done. As I'm writing this my oldest child is picking up a new batch of eggs. They will taste delicious. But an equal joy (ok, a greater joy) will come from the moment when he brings them home. He will put them on the countertop and say "Mum, the eggs are here." And I will open the boxes (I buy 3 dozen at a time - these boy children will not stop eating) and I will take a few minutes just to stand and look and admire.
Egg stamp, you are spectacular.